The coming year promises to be a good one for those of us watching the augmented and mixed reality world. And the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), starting Jan. 5 in Las Vegas, Nevada, for its 50th year, is bringing 2017 in with a bang—we're expecting a ton of great announcements on the horizon.
The march to the mainstreaming of augmented reality can sometimes seem slow, but this week things picked up in earnest.
When filtered through the prism of the top stories of the year, the business of augmented reality 2019 was defined as much by epic failures of AR startups as it was by the promising developments that propelled the industry forward into 2020.
When building anything of a social nature, be it a local roller derby or softball team, a club dance night for chiptune, or building new technology markets, the community around those ideas are an important factor in helping these things not only come into existence but to grow into something that enlightens everyone involved. The community around an idea can actually make or break these new ventures — and this applies to augmented and mixed reality as well.
The results of Microsoft's $480 million contract with the US Army are on display and users continue to test the suped-up version of the HoloLens 2.
While Apple's AR wearables development continues clandestinely, its mobile ecosystem is laying the foundation for the software side of its smartglasses, with Apple Arcade serving as the latest example.
As the year comes to a close, we've invited some of the leaders of the AR industry to take the time to look back at the progress the AR industry has made while looking forward to what's ahead in 2020. A report on the top apps of 2019 — and the decade — also offers some insights on the progress and direction of mobile AR.
While Apple's smartglasses development reportedly moves forward behind-the-scenes, the company continues to build on its AR software foundation in its mobile ecosystem with further iterations to its ARKit platform and the introduction of new AR development tools.
A week after the L.E.A.P. Conference, our cup of Magic Leap news continues to floweth over, with the company's content chief giving us some insight into the company's strategy, and Twilio sharing what its virtual chat app looks like.
In his famous 1996 "Content is King" essay, Bill Gates predicted that content is where tech companies will make money on the Internet. The adage clearly holds true in the current phase of augmented reality experience.
It's the holiday season, and the tech industry is giving consumers several AR products and apps as gift-giving options.
As demonstrated by holographic experiences for the Microsoft HoloLens and the Magic Leap One, volumetric video capture is a key component of enabling the more realistic augmented reality experiences of the future.
Facebook had a pretty big week in terms of augmented reality, with much of its news coming from the Oculus 6 keynote presentation. But Mark Zuckerberg's social media company found other areas of impact outside of Oculus 6 as well.
The era of smartglasses designed for consumers has officially begun, as shipments of North Focals began arriving at its stores this week. And the company now has plans to expand its retail footprint.
The arrival of Magic Leap One is tantalizingly close and, although the company has been saving the last details for launch day, a few of the more important details were found this week hiding deep in the code on Magic Leap's website.
If you're not impressed with the current crop of AR content, and you're worried this may put a damper on the industry's growth, these stories should give you cause for some optimism.
Last week's Augmented World Expo felt like a distant memory by this Monday, as Apple unveiled ARKit 2.0 at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Certainly, this news would overshadow anything augmented reality this week as it nearly eclipsed AWE when early reports leaked of the toolkit's new superpowers.
Consumers are chomping at the bit for augmented reality smartglasses from Cupertino's finest, but one market analyst is saying not so fast, Apple fans. Meanwhile, automotive AR is gaining speed, with the latest milestone coming courtesy of a major investment in waveguides by Continental. And although mobile AR apps have already arrived, retailer Target is taking a different approach. So why is Target tinkering with web-based AR? Answers below...
With all the recent activity around augmented reality, the possibilities involving immersive computing and commerce are quickly becoming obvious, and digital payments giant PayPal has no plans to sit on the sidelines
Investors aren't keen to throw money at a new technology sector without at least some hope of a significant return on their investment in the future. That's why a recent run of activity within the augmented reality business space has stoked some new optimism among the financial community.
This week, saw two companies leaning on AR to prop up their financial futures. On one hand, Apple made quite a bit of AR-related news ahead of its quarterly earnings report next week. On the other hand, Vuzix launched a pre-order program for its Blade smartglasses and closed the largest financing deal in the company's history to fuel its ongoing headset production.
We may have to wait a few years before they arrive, but reports of Apple's headset taking shape in Cupertino gives the tech world hope that its white knight for consumer AR is on its way.
Mobile apps themselves are not always the end product or service for generating revenue. More often, they are deployed as tactics within a larger marketing or public relations strategy.
Augmented reality can be used to fascinate and entertain, but it can be applied in the workplace. While companies on the entertainment end received their votes of confidence via funding, two companies working with enterprises demonstrated their worth by teaming up to pursue customers.
Augmented reality began on smartphones but technical limitations have prevented further development. Google's Tango (formerly Project Tango) aimed to change all that, and with Lenovo's help, they now have their first device.
Brands are increasingly adopting augmented reality to promote their products and services, and they have multiple paths for bringing AR experience to their audiences.
In the wake of Apple and Google pitching augmented reality to schools, McGraw-Hill is stepping up its own augmented reality efforts for education.
After closing its 2017 financial books on a high note, Snap, Inc. is planning to ride the momentum of its augmented reality products into the new year. That's the main takeaway following the company's 2017 earnings conference call, which was held on Tuesday.
It's fitting that students at the University of Washington can catch a glimpse of the new, 135,000 square-foot computer science building in augmented reality before construction is completed.
While Apple augmented reality smartglasses are not yet official, the tech giant is ramping up its resources by appointing company veteran Frank Casanova to promote its augmented reality offerings.
Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4.21, bringing a number of new features, bug fixes, and improvements for augmented reality development, including deeper support for Magic Leap One and the addition of support for the Windows Mixed Reality platform and headsets.
While Apple has generally been more bullish on augmented reality as opposed to virtual reality, the latest whispers about its purported AR headset suggests that it may be giving VR another look.
Usually paper beats rock. With augmented reality, The Rock beats paper. Using the Life VR app for iOS or Android, Entertainment Weekly readers can point their smartphones at the cover of the Dec. 8 edition to view a holiday greeting from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, star of the forthcoming reboot, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.
The makers of arguably the two most important mobile AR apps, Niantic and Snap, both had good news this week, with the former preparing to replicate its success with Pokémon GO for another franchise and the latter notching another popular augmented reality Lens for Snapchat.
UPDATE: Entries are now closed. Thank you for participating! Next Reality is where we help you literally 'see' into the future of augmented reality, and to help with that mission we're offering three free pairs of Snap Spectacles 3 to three lucky readers who sign up for the Next Reality daily AR email newsletter.
In years past, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) mostly dabbled in the future as far as the long-term vision for augmented reality was concerned. This year, however, objects in the future are much closer than they appear.
They say it is always darkest before the dawn. If that's the case, then perhaps there's a light ahead for Magic Leap after more unfavorable news in the form of executive departures.
Augmented reality plays a key role in the evolution of adjacent technologies, such as 5G connectivity and brain-control interfaces (BCI), and the business news of the week serves up proof points for both examples.
Developers and enterprise customers chomping at the bit to get their hands on HoloLens 2 may not have to wait much longer, as Microsoft passed one of the remaining hurdles needed to release their new tech into the wild.
Now that we've had our hands on the Magic Leap One for almost a year and early adopter developers have had the opportunity to publish apps for the AR headset, it's time to see how it stands up against the rigors of a day at the office. We did just that, and we wrote about it!
